


Sustenance

by LookingForDroids



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: F/M, Food as a Metaphor for Love, POV Second Person, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Folykl goes from almost dying in an alley to being plied with junk food. Things get better from there.
Relationships: Folykl Darane/Kuprum Maxlol
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Sustenance

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt _snacks/meals_ for Conciliatory Month, but I don’t have a tumblr to link it and it might be _just_ a shade too adult for that challenge anyway, if only because of these two being themselves.
> 
> Also, much as I love Kuprum, he is in fact a 4channer, and some of his dialogue reflects it.

You’re not dead.

That’s your biggest surprise of the night, and the one that most of your thinkpan still hasn’t caught up to, because if being alive is ever going to start feeling real, it sure doesn’t right now. It’s sunrise out there, judging by the distant calls of flapbeasts, but you’re someplace cool and sheltered that smells of dust, and as far as you can tell, you’re safe. You’re not dead or about to be dead, you’re not shivering or curled up into a tight little ball of pain, and you’ve got enough energy flowing through you to keep you conscious and moving. The kid who brought you here is still letting you lean against him and drink your fill of his psionics, your head tucked beneath his chin and his hand pressed against the small of your back. It feels like hot little sparks are buzzing under your skin where he touches you, burning away the deep, familiar ache in your thoracic cavity and loosening the knot between your shoulders. You’re pretty sure there’s going to be payment due for that eventually, but he hasn’t pushed the issue yet, and if he’s not going to, neither are you. 

He seems OK, at least. He hasn’t done anything to make you hate him. He’s mostly just been letting you sleep, but sometime while you were busy drifting in and out of consciousness, he acquired a box of pepperoni and grubsausage flavor disc, and now he’s trying to convince you to eat.

“Not hungry,” you say, burying your face into the fabric of his shirt. It smells comfortingly like sweat and greasy food; he smells like ozone and feels like lightning, a wellspring of concentrated energy, and you don’t want to let go. With all that to occupy your attention, it is really hard to care about flavor disc. You mostly just want to cling to him like a vampiric barnacle until you fall asleep again, because who knows how long he’ll let you leech off him before he gets sick of your overwhelming personal charisma and ditches you in an alley somewhere. You gotta take what you can get. Food is secondary.

“If you don’t eat, you’ll die,” the kid says, like that’s some kind of fucking revelation. You don’t bother pointing out that you’re going to die anyway, so it’s fine. You also don’t let yourself dwell on the thought that that fact is currently a little less conclusive than it used to be, because that way lies giving a shit about your projected lifespan, and you’ve learned not to make that mistake. 

“If you don’t share my bounty of flavor disc and carbonated sucrose,” he adds, “I’ll be triggered. I’ll cry. You really want me to cry, shitlord?”

That gets a laugh out of you, at least. A kind of weird, rattling laugh that hurts your thoracic struts, but you’ll take it.

“Maybe, yeah,” you say. But you actually kind of don’t, and he actually sounds like he kind of might, so you take the slice of flavor disc he keeps trying to shove into your hand and contemplate the process of taking a bite. It smells like meat and cheese and grease, and your acid tract clenches in what might be hunger or nausea. It’s hard to tell, at this point.

“OK,” you say. “Not dying. Here goes.”

You take a bite. Hot cheese burns your tongue, but then the flavors of pepperoni and salty, fatty grease hit your mouth, and all of a sudden, you don’t care. You’re already swallowing, barely bothering to chew, as some forgotten survival instinct kicks into gear and reminds you that yeah, actually, you really are desperately fucking hungry. Like, for food, which is a thing that exists, and matters. You tear off another chunk of flavor disc, and don’t bother to chew that one either.

“That’s the good stuff, huh?” the kid says. “Just like my lusus used to drag home from the dumpster, LOLOL.”

You’re pretty sure that’s another joke and the only person here who’s ever eaten dumpster food is you. Maybe only partially sure. You don’t ask about his lusus or his hive, what they’re like, whether he still has either. It’s not your business, and you wouldn’t give a shit even if it was, except – maybe this isn’t going to be about getting you to suck him off in return for letting you suck his energy. Maybe he’s just lonely. You let that thought settle as you finish your flavor disc, and when you’re done licking the last traces of grease off your claws, you ask, “You got a name?”

Stupid question. Names are for people you expect to stick around, which is approximately no one. But there’s a dangerous little shard of hope lodged somewhere behind your thoracic struts telling you that this one might, and you can’t manage to make yourself excise it.

“No, I go by goldblood number fifty-four,” he says. “Dumbass.”

He sends another scintillant jolt of electricity through you, radiating out along your nerves and washing you blissfully free of pain. The noise you make is slightly less dignified than the kind you hear during drone season, and he snorts with laughter.

“Into that, are you?”

“Fuck, yes,” you say. “Fill me up. Gimme all you got.”

He laughs harder, holds you close against his skinny chest and zaps you again, and it’s hard to say whether the warmth you feel is from one of those things or all of them. You like it, though. You want to hear him laugh again.

“Right now, what I’ve got is a lot more of this flavor disc,” he says, and this time, when he tries to hand you another slice, you don’t argue. You’re starving, and there’s food. Simple as that. It’s a good feeling. 

“So what is it?” you ask, through a mouthful of cheese. “Your name.”

“Told you, it’s goldblood fifty-four,” he says. Before you can call him an asshole, he adds, “It’s Kuprum. You?”

Your throat goes tight, and there’s a moment when you can’t make yourself say anything.

“Folykl Darane,” you mutter, like it’s no big deal, which it isn’t. It’s just that maybe you are a bit of a dumbass, because you hadn’t actually been expecting him to ask. 

Kuprum says your name like he’s not planning to forget it, and it hurts a little to hear, in a way that’s hard to define. There’s no reason why it should. It’s just that it’s been sweeps since anyone said that collection of syllables out loud, and until now, you hadn’t thought that anyone would again. 

“Goldblood fifty-five,” he adds, holding you a little tighter. He floods you with lightning, and then it doesn’t hurt anymore.


End file.
